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248   SINO-IRANICA

1.) . Persians IF ,fir c designate them a-yüe-hun fruits.i1 For the same period we have the testimony of the Arabic merchant Soleiman, who wrote in A.D. 85 z, to the effect that pistachios grow in China.'

As shown by the two forms, a-yüe of the Yu yan tsa tsu and a-yüe-hun of the Pen ts`ao .i i and Hai yao pen ts`ao, the fuller form must represent a compound consisting of the elements a-yüe and hun. In order to understand the transcription a-yüe, consideration of the following facts is necessary.

The Old-Iranian word for the walnut has not been handed down to us, but there is good evidence to prompt the conclusion that it must have been of the type *agôza or *angoza. On the one hand, we hav e Armenian engoiz, Ossetic dngozd or ängüz, and Hebrew egôz; 3 on the other hand, we meet in Yidgha, a Hindu-Kush language, the form ogûzo, as compared with New Persian kôz and gôz.4 The signification of this word is "nut" in general, and "walnut" in particular. Further, there is in Sanskrit the Iranian loan-word âkhiita, aksôta, or aksôcda, which must have been borrowed at an early date, as, in the last-named form, the word occurs twice in the Bower Manuscript.' It has survived in Hindustâni as axrôt or dkrôt. The actual existence of an East-Iranian form with the ancient initial a- is guaranteed by the Chinese transcription a-yüe; for a-yüe (i7 II answers to an ancient *a-nwieô (nw'ed) or *a-gwieS, a-gwü8;6 and this, in my opinion, is intended to represent the Iranian word for "nut" with initial a-, mentioned above; that is, *angwiz, angwbz, agôz.

Chinese hun itit answers to an ancient *ywun or wun. In regard to this Iranian word, the following information may be helpful. E.

1 If it is correct that the transcription a-yüe-hun was already contained in the Nan cou ki (which it is impossible to prove, as we do not possess the text of this work), the transcription must have been based on an original prototype of early Sasanian times or on an early Middle-Persian form. This, in fact, is confirmed by the very character of the Sino-Iranian word, which has preserved the initial a-, while this one became lost in New Persian. It may hence be inferred that Li Sun's information is correct, and that the transcription a-yüe-hun may really have been contained in the Nan &ou ki, and would accordingly be pre-T'an.

2 M. REINAUD, Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde et à la Chine, Vol. I, p. 22.

3 Whether Georgian nigozi and the local name Nl'yova of Ptolemy (W. TOMASCHEK, Pamirdialekte, Siizber. Wiener Akad., 188o, p. ?90) belong here, I do not feel certain. Cf. HÜBSCHMANN, Armenische Grammatik, p. 393.

4 In_ regard to the elision of initial a in New Persian, see HÜBSCHMANN, Persische Studien, p. 120.

5 HOERNLE'S edition, pp. 32, 90, I2I.

6 Regarding the phonetic value of JJ , see the detailed study of PELLIOT (Bull. de l'Ecole française, Vol. V, p. 443) and the writer's Language of the Yüe-chi or Indo-Scythians.